The Mark of a Christian
Did you know that certain types of genuine Hawaiian shirts are created from beautifully patterned material turned inside out? For those of us from the mainland, it makes no sense at all. This gorgeous, colorful material is actually cut and sewn with the “wrong” side of the fabric facing outward and the “right” side facing in. It seems crazy. The shirts are inside out! Doesn’t that break some sort of rule… or turn some existing rule upside down?
I’m sure that the Pharisees thought the same thing of Jesus in the story in our text today. They asked him why his disciples ignored centuries of Jewish tradition to eat their food without first washing in the way prescribed by law. After all, these laws had been established to protect the Jews from anything unclean… to keep them holy as people of God. And the mark of a good Jew was keeping the law. Yet Jesus defended his disciples, telling the Pharisees that there was nothing outside a person that could defile that person. Instead, he said, it was what came out of a person that defiled that person. But that idea ran counter to all that the Jews of that day believed. Evil? Coming from the inside out? What was Jesus trying to do? Change the rules? Turn their world upside down? Couldn’t he see for himself that the disciples were eating their food with defiled hands? Was he trying to say that things are not always what they seem to be? But then, if you think about it, wasn’t Jesus himself not really what he seemed to be? After all, he wasn’t really a poor carpenter from Nazareth, was he? He was God Incarnate! But they didn’t know that.
There are many things in nature that are not what they seem to be. Take scorpion fish, for example. They are stunningly beautiful fish, with long trailing fins and tails. But those beautiful fins have long, deadly hidden spines filled with a lethal poison… poison that can kill. Spider webs are another example. Seen in the light of a new dawn, these delicate structures sparkle with the morning dew. The beautiful lacy web seems ethereal, and yet, it has a tensile strength that can hold insects and small animals much larger than the spider itself. Then there are delicate butterflies with large spots on their wings that look like eyes… making the butterflies appear to be larger and more ferocious than they truly are.
There are people in this world who are not what they seem to be either. In fact, it has puzzled me how some people who grow up in the most difficult of circumstances… in poverty… as orphans… during war… or in difficult political environments … become great moral, religious or political leaders in our world, while others who seem to have every advantage in life… a two-parent home… a Christian environment… wealth or privilege… become killers, destroying lives and property. How could Mother Theresa, a tiny little woman from Albania, find a home in the ghettos of Calcutta and work with the poor and destitute all her life, finding fulfillment there and convincing thousands of other women to join her in her quest? It just seems to run counter to everything that our society claims as success in life. At the same time, how could teenagers from wealthy Christian homes who have every advantage that money can buy perpetrate such horrible crimes as the shooting at Columbine School? That also seems to be a contradiction.
What I am convinced of is that we, as human beings, spend too much time judging others by the superficial things that we see on the outside… the clothes that they wear… the houses that they live in… the cars that they drive… whether or not they follow society’s “rules.” What is the mark of a Christian? Why is it that some people who seem to have no money… no opportunity… and no advantages grow up to live exemplary lives and become leaders in our society, while others who seem to have plenty of money… unlimited opportunity … and every advantage in life choose a road that leads to death and destruction? Does it have something to do with what we teach our children… and how?
In our first reading, from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the children of Israel that they are to obey the commandments that God has given to them. There are no “ifs”… “buts”… “perhaps” … and “maybes” in this passage. Just obey. Just keep those ten little commandments and the promised return is life in the land that God has given to them. The text goes on to say that no one else has laws that are so just… that we should make them known to our children… which we do in every thing that we do and say. We are the example that they follow. What comes out of us is the pattern-card that they imitate.
And yet obedience to the law is not the whole of the answer. If it were, then the Pharisees would have been in the right when they confronted the disciples for breaking the ancient laws of the Jewish faith. There were no people on earth better at keeping the law than the Pharisees. They even made more laws to help people keep the original laws… those Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from the mountain. And yet, we are becoming more and more like them. Someone has calculated that there are 3.5 million laws that have been established just to force us to keep those original Ten Commandments.
No, just keeping the law is not the answer. There is something else. And this is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “These people [that is, the Pharisees] honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” It is what is within a person that determines whether a person is defiled… whether that person is holy or is evil. It is not something that comes from the outside in, but something that comes from the inside out. So, what is that thing that is within a person? What is it that marks us as Christians?
I am convinced that what is inside a person it is a call… a call to serve… a call to ministry. It is the voice of God that moves us beyond mere obedience to a life of service. In a 1974 interview, Mother Theresa said, “I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?" And yet very few people would choose to do what she did. To most of us, it seems crazy. Yet there was something within her that compelled her to leave her home and spend her life living and working among the poor… something beyond obedience to the law.
We, too, are called to serve… to go beyond obedience to the law… to serve. We are called each day to take a long hard look at ourselves and our lives… and sometimes, those moments of personal introspection can be very painful. Forty-three years ago this week, 250,000 people descended on Washington, D.C., to protest the state of race relations in our country. During that “March on Washington”… on August 28, 1963… the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his vision of our nation’s future with those who marched that day. “I have a dream,” he said, “that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The Civil Rights Act was passed the following year and our country went through several years of painful transition, which many of us witnessed.
Dr. King could have spent his life preaching from a fairly comfortable pulpit in Atlanta, the pulpit where his father and grandfather had preached before him. What was it that caused him, night after night, to leave his family and reach out to total strangers with rhetoric so powerful that it changed the way we think about those around us, and was so threatening to some that it put his life in danger? This was not just obedience to God’s law. It went beyond obedience. It was his response to a call… a call to serve.
We, too, are called to serve… perhaps not in the same way in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa served… but to minister to others in some way. I think we begin that life of service by making sure that what comes out of us does not defile us… by being Christ-like in all we do and say. And, it is not just obedience to the law… to God’s Law… that will take us there… though that would be a good start. It is being truly changed… from the inside out… so that what comes out of us does not defile us, but makes us more Christ-like… and makes us worthy examples for our children to follow. It is listening to the voice of God speaking to us… calling us to serve. It is by having a dream of a better America… as Dr. King did. It is seeing the face of God in every person that we meet… as Mother Theresa did. It is hearing the voice of Jesus say to us, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
There is a story that is told of Mother Theresa telling Prince Michael of Greece that she once dreamed she was at the gates of heaven. Instead of the welcome she expected, she heard St. Peter say, “Go back to Earth. There are no slums up here.” While we are here on earth, our goal should not eternal life… a life of peaceful rest in the hereafter… though that will be our reward one day. But while we are here, our goal should be the coming of the kingdom here on earth. It’s time to get to work to make it happen… even if we have to turn everything… including ourselves… upside down and inside out. That is the mark of a Christian. Amen.
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23